The Sunday March 21, 2010, St. Paul Pioneer Press carried an interview between Dan Carr of “The Collaborative” and Gov. Tim Pawlenty. In the interview, Gov. Pawlenty makes a statement that “we have a government that is kind of a 1940s industrial model in a world that is becoming an iPad. Those two things are going [...]

The following was gleaned from a January discussion on the FS-LIST listserv for field service workers: The theft of collections is an issue for many local historical organizations. There are other security risks that can be addressed in a more formal risk assessment from a variety of local resources. However, here are some considerations that [...]

Writing key statements (mission, vision, values) is a delicate business, and there is much – often differing - advice online. The views expressed in this series are informed by the broad and specific experience of Minnesota’s historical organizations, and may not necessarily match every organization. Done well, mission statements communicate succinctly and clearly the organization’s [...]

N. Elizabeth Schlatter’s “A New Spin: Are DJs, rappers, and bloggers ‘curators’?” in the American Association of Museums’ journal “Museum” (Jan/Feb 2010) raises an interesting question. How protective do you feel about your title? With changes in usership at local organizations, people demonstrate that they want to get beyond filters down to the raw history [...]

USA Today carried the story Kids’ electronic media use jumps to 53 hours a week. If one goal of local historical organizations is to be where people are, and children spend 53 hours a week on average with electronic gadgets, what should local history museums be thinking about? One approach might be to embrace all [...]

Like many museums, we receive copies of newsletters and mailing from a goodly number of our fellow historical organizations. I will admit that I don’t always have time to digest everything that is printed. But on occasion, an item will get my attention. A copy that recently crossed my desk contained an intriguing statistic. [...]

“As they are for home-town residents everywhere, the local attractions always are just ‘there,’ with seemingly plenty of time to stop in. Trips to distant attractions beckon, and we don’t discount the road trip’s enduring appeal. But somehow time to visit the local sites never seems to materialize, and its always in the wake of [...]